Mineral Content and Physicochemical Properties in Female Rats Bone During Growing Stage

The atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS) is a technique extensively used for trace and ultra trace analysis of organic and inorganic materials. AAS is a novel method that determines in liquid samples the presence of metals such as: Ca, Fe, Cu, Al, Pb, Zn, and Cd from different sources. The determination of minerals is important in environmental and biological studies as well as in the clinical practice. The determination of mineral content is a key to understand changes in some metabolism that conduct to diseases as result of the increase or decrease of mineral components in diet and consequently, to develop new models in the field of animal and human nutrition. In the case of biological samples including plant leaves, fruits, vegetables, organic vegetables i.e. nopal (Opuntia ficus indica), Rodriguez-Garcia et al., (2007) reported that the major mineral components in this cactus was as follows: Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Manganese, Iron, Zinc, Potassium, and minor mineral components were: Lithium, Vanadium, Cobalt, Arsenic, Selenium, Cadmium, Thallium (Hernandez-Urbiola et al., 2010, 2011). AAS has been used also to analyze muscle tissue, blood, urine, hair, bones, among others (Martinez-Flores et al., 2002; Christian, 1972). In most cases complex nature of biological materials requires dry ashing followed by wet digestion with oxidizing acids, i.e. HNO3 and HCl4.